


The World that Wasn't

by AshVee



Series: The Necromancer's Bells [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Astarael - Freeform, Charter Magic, Free Magic, Gen, Homicide, Suicide, Suicide Bell-er?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-01-26 20:48:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12565880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshVee/pseuds/AshVee
Summary: This is a series of oneshots that fall into the Necromancer's Bells series but don't actually happen in the series itself because they're either an alternate universe of this 'verse or something that could have happened that didn't for one reason or another. Some of them are a bit angsty.





	1. Fate's Dirge

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Well, the Abhorsen Universe just exploded a little bit, because I have this series of one-shot ideas in my head, but I know they aren’t the direction the piece is going in, mostly because they hurt me. 
> 
> As a reminder for those that haven’t read The Old Kingdom/Abhorsen Series:
> 
> Astarael - The Sorrowful. This is the final bell, and it banishes all who hear it far into Death, including the ringer.

The thing about Charter Magic, or what Deaton called Charter Magic, was that it was constricting. There were rules and regulations and don’t do this and do that and it made his head throb trying to parse out all the do’s and don’t’s. 

Standing on the shorn down remnants of the Nemeton, his own blood-bound charter stones at each of the Quarters, Stiles could feel the world thrumming in his veins. There were so many possibilities swimming beneath the hum of the world, waiting, promising. 

Promises. 

He’d made a promise once, to the people he loved. 

The Nemeton and his Charter Stones flared at his agony, screaming as Free Magic and Charter Magic became one with his will. Marks of power and those of remembrance and reality and fracture at the heart of time. He reached out with the seemingly endless font of energy at the core of him and brought them into his own soul, made them resonate with power and without thinking twice, cast them into the world. 

Time and reality and focus were lost to him, but in a moment, he was standing in front of a familiar family home. The sun was shining overhead, hot and comforting after the chill of Death had soaked so deep into his bones. A man in his late forties walked out the front door of the home, a young blonde girl trailing behind. 

She could have only been sixteen or maybe seventeen, but there was a sinister shine to her eyes, a glow to her soul that was already so familiar. Stiles stood at the end of their driveway, striding toward the pair of them as they came out. 

“Gerard Argent?” he called, questioning, wanting to be sure in his mind the same way he was in his bones. “And you must be Katie?”

“How can I help you?” Gerard asked, an easy smile on his face. Kate batted big blue eyes up at him, and Stiles’s hand tightened around the bell clasped in his hand. 

“You can join me,” Stiles said, eyes flickering around the area. No one else was in earshot. He brought Astarael up and the sweet, angel’s call sounded in the front yard.


	2. Mosrael: The Seasaw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles contemplates the rules of the Books and decides that they mean less than they should.
> 
> As a reminder for those who haven't read The Abhorsen series or have forgotten: 
> 
> Mosrael - A bell that brings the listener closer to life and the ringer closer to death.   
> Kibeth - The Walker and a bell of several sounds, contrary and difficult. It gives freedom of movement to the Dead or it can be used to walk them through the next gate to Death.   
> Dyrim - The Speaker which can give voice back to the dead or it can still a tongue.   
> Belgaer - The Thinker - a bell that can ring on its own. It restores independent thought, memory, and all patterns of life to a person. It can also erase them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of Mosrael, but more and more lately, with this universe and the possibilities that lay in wait here, I’m hooked. Of course, this is complete wish fulfillment and something a good person wouldn’t do and something that isn’t going to happen in this AU I’ve built, but this beautiful little one shot collection lets me do all these fun little things without damaging that universe.

Stiles’s mind burned with charter marks. Ones of making, ones for breaking. Past and present and future, all marks he’d found in the Books. They were power and possibility, but, the books cautioned, they were danger. 

A Great Mark, one of the oldest and most powerful, one not diluted with specificity, could burn his throat, consume his lungs, and eat up all he was at the core of him if he wasn’t ready for them. Which was why, really, he wasn’t thinking about one of the Great Marks. 

Not really. 

He was thinking about little ones, specific ones, ones that were used to weave charter skins and sendings and to create substance out of nothingness. He was thinking, specifically, about Laura Hale and her horrified beautiful face staring up at him out of a grave. 

Charter sendings were, for the most part, non-specific for obvious reasons. No one wanted great Aunt Gemma popping back up years later in a sending to bring you tea. It brought up painful memories, mostly because the sendings had no soul of their own, no spark of life that made them independant beings. 

That was a line. 

The Book of the Dead and the Book of Remembrance were clear on that subject. There were lines you should and should not cross. Moral ambiguity could only be stretched so far, and Stiles could only wonder the truth behind that last page, the page that never changed. 

“Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?” he asked the cool autumn air of the preserve. He’d come out here to clear his mind, to think on possibilities and what was right and what was wrong. The Books said it was wrong to abuse the magic, to use it to bring someone back from the dead, to tie their soul to a dead, decaying body and make it live like that, afraid of the sun and swift water and all the things that made up life. 

He could see that. It wasn’t fair. 

To tie a soul at rest to a body that would wither and decay, a body that couldn’t enjoy the light of day or one that didn’t know the pleasure of running water between their fingers and toes...Except, that was Death in them, that was the fear of the River. 

Erica had balked the first time they’d gone kayaking, but she’d shook herself, steeled some nerve inside of her, and soldiered on into the water. Nothing had stopped her, but then, Erica wasn’t dead. 

Erica’s body was that of a wolf. It had healed the moment her spirit was back inside of it, held in life and unable to go into death because of Stiles’s will alone. That had made the body live, and the soul had fit back inside of it like a glove. 

Life. 

The marks were flooding his mind before he realized he was considering them. Marks for pallor and markes for dark eyes and marks for femininity and grace. Marks, he realized, that flew from his mind to a chain there, a lingering chain of never-ending charter and free magic marks flying off his fingers in a litany of things that formed a particular creature in front of him. 

Laura Hale. 

The shimmering convalence of possibilities swam in front of his eyes, and he held them there, in the part of his brain that could do two things at once and still ache for something more to focus on. With the chain fixed in his mind, he drew Mosrael, and plunged into death. 

The words fell through his lips to part a waterfall. 

Free magic froze a whirlpool, and he walked along it’s frigid surface. 

He parted mist and sprinted across a dark bridge. 

Magic sang in his blood and in his mind, and if asked, he would have no further knowledge of how he came to be standing in ankle deep water, staring up at a field of stars so brilliant that they nearly blinded him. There were souls there, hundreds of thousands of thousands of souls, all among those stars, making up those stars, and as he clutched Mosrael in his hand, he called her name and rang the bell. 

Something tore at his core, at the point just between his heart and his gut. It tugged and ripped, but he stood there, staring up at an endless sky, and he knew. 

It wasn’t his time. 

An endless amount of time later, someone’s hand slipped inside his and he turned to look at Laura Hale. She was beautiful, with big dark eyes and a smile on her lips. Her fingers squeezed his, and he opened his mouth to ask, because that was important. Asking. 

“Please,” she whispered, eyes flickering around them, to the souls with their attention so rapt to the stars above, waiting for their own time of death, the time they were intended to go. “My family needs me.” 

Stiles smiled, gripped her hand fiercely, and they ran. 

They ran until Stiles was staring at his charter and free magic creation, his rendition of Laura Hale. The soul locked inside, he smiled, put Mosrael back in its binding, and drew Kibeth, Dyrim, and Belgaer, the walker, the speaker, and the thinker. 

They rang in a three part harmony, and when Stiles silenced their clappers, Laura Hale blinked out at him from her charter skin, and in one last mark, whispered past his lips, she was whole. Charter marks shone bright and faded, leaving skin behind, hair and nails and nakedness. 

She stared at him, unabashed and strong, a mischievous smile on her lips as she parted them to speak. 

“Abhorsen,” she said, whispering the name he’d read over and over again in the Books. But that was wrong. An Abhorsen didn’t raise the dead, didn’t bind a soul to a charter mark vessel and make it live. He stared down at his hands, still holding the bells before he tucked them away and quieted the shaking in his fingertips. 

“Maybe,” he said, shrugging off his jacket for her to wear. She shook her head, threw her head back, and howled, the human voice smoothing out into that of a wolf’s. Before him stood a large, grey wolf, its head to his hip, and it brushed past him before sprinting into the woods, toward an answering call. 

As he stood in the preserve, he stared up at the starts peeking through the canopy and wondered how many times he could stand at that nineth gate before something challenged him, before something extra tried to claw its way along with him, before he rang Mosrael and his soul was ripped from his body and implanted among those stars. 

He smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking a bit of creative license with Mosrael here, mostly because its not really used a lot in the Old Kingdom/Abhorsen series. Stiles is at the Nineth Gate in this, and he cannot be thrown further (past the gate) because it is not his time to die (the only thing that opens the ninth gate).


End file.
